tmsr - Search: tolkien

asciilifeform: among thinking folx in modern ru , 'miami usa' is often derisively referred to as 'valinor' , after the distant land tolkien's elves decamped to when shit hit the fan in their world

a111: Logged on 2016-08-02 16:13 mircea_popescu: phf allow me to quote to you from modern tolkien : "The heir apparent, Crown Prince Maha Vajiralongkorn, is poorly regarded in Thailand and the succession has clouded the brows of not only the Thai political elite, but the Thai people, who believe a period of substantial instability will follow the King's death"

asciilifeform: nao, on other hand, the ~orig~ bolix, leaked like sieve, yes, regularly we hear about some old fart sitting on buncha tapes he picked up from dumpster, but always same element in story, he sits like tolkien's gorlum, 'my precious!', on the goods

mircea_popescu: "battlestar galactica" is actually more accomplished, and this coming from a man who actually despises tolkien, let alone rando pulper.

erlehmann: Framedragger i actually meant “i had not noticed to that extent until now how tolkien tells a story that can be seen as a race war”

mircea_popescu: to be noted that l'encyclopedie (the 1700s item) was a LITERARY WORK. with d'alembert almost a sort of tolkien of his time. it mattered not so much whether the items contained were right or wrong (obviously most were wrong, 1700s) but the fact that you could rely on every respectable gent knowing at least of them.

mircea_popescu: the fact that the republic creates the tools it uses, entirely and exactly, with no quarter given to this otherwise universal "i found it, i'm calling it a tool and allowing it to shape me in the process" idiocy simply is not conceivable naturally, to the poor souls captive in some sort of children's tolkien fairytale.

mircea_popescu: consumerist culture, meaning that unless i fuck tolkien's corpse into action, i'm sol.

Framedragger: ..yeah i'm not going for sindarin or w/e language(s) tolkien invented. could be fun, but.. eh

asciilifeform: (iirc this was in the tolkien thread, where we disagreed, but the basic effect is quite real)

mircea_popescu: and note that naming the tolkien for tolkien isn't blaming him for the gulag. merely recognising his intricacy in the civilisation-masquerading-as-a-culture that spawned him.

mircea_popescu: there's a quanta of energy, a token of friendship and a tolkien of usg.aspie h&d.

phf: diana_coman: perfectly fit for proper and good life as defined by tolkien, somehow magically fit for all the necessary tasks of the quest. even fighting, like pippin and merry after they are split from fellowship. they are literally only unfit for things that are bad, and even there frodo eventually at the last moment gets corrupted, Let That Be A Warning To You All

diana_coman: <mircea_popescu> really, byzantine fiction (currently known as the vulgate) is much better. but i don't think much more of the people who regard the bible as "great writing" than of the tolkien fans. <- fans, lol; out of curiosity: an example as to "much better"?

mircea_popescu: really, byzantine fiction (currently known as the vulgate) is much better. but i don't think much more of the people who regard the bible as "great writing" than of the tolkien fans.

diana_coman: as to length that indeed I can agree it is a big fault of tolkien - at times he rambles because apparently he's just too much in love with the landscape basically

mircea_popescu: the thing flew "look, this thing almost like in carroll is in tolkien" "yes but here's deluged in crap" "oh, well this guy deluges things in crap" "that he does or that he doesn't has no bearing on crap and deluging."

mircea_popescu: we're talking of tolkien and hgis masteries. that he THINKS it's ok to disregard the brevity rule does not make it go away.

mircea_popescu: hanbot why would you place ~it in the actual work~ when it's a response to a meta-discussion you started with " i don't think tolkien had much mastery of economy of words" ?

a111: Logged on 2016-08-02 17:20 diana_coman: I'll add only the message that considered to be "what Tolkien had to say" (even though he did it through "not-real-life universe") namely that all and everyone (yeah, the ordinary and no, they are not made anything by gandalf quite pointedly not made anything by him) is in some way responsible /called to do something when shit hits the fan; that is all I guess

hanbot: sure. and no, i don't think tolkien had much mastery of economy of words (somehow this'd seem to make him less a copywriter? or maybe merely a more monstrous one).

phf: so is it purely when i became a man, i put the ways of childhood behind me, or you're saying there's something specific to tolkien that turns his fans into castrati?

diana_coman: I'll add only the message that considered to be "what Tolkien had to say" (even though he did it through "not-real-life universe") namely that all and everyone (yeah, the ordinary and no, they are not made anything by gandalf quite pointedly not made anything by him) is in some way responsible /called to do something when shit hits the fan; that is all I guess ☟︎

diana_coman: hm; so far we established we agree (and apparently this wasn't in fact disputed although it seemed so) that tolkien's writing is not reflecting "real life" nor intended to really; this makes it crud in your view I gather

mircea_popescu: nevertheless, tolkien is therefore part of english CIVILISATION. he is an artefact. he is pointedly NOT part of culture.

asciilifeform: 'tolkien as real life' belongs in same asylum as 'doom as real life'

diana_coman: Tolkien made his universe as a place to experiment with his language; I can fully see and agree with the point that it is "not real life" - I read him very late and therefore I knew this already, I never for a second considered it as "real life" or reflection of it or whatever; I guess that's where the whole thing comes from

mircea_popescu: what ever happened to make tolkien more acceptable than sadoveanu ?

diana_coman: mircea_popescu> this activity, not just "tolkien" but generally "reading", is very much subverted in the anglotard world. have yo useen this, whole carloads of white, quiet, mousy people "reading a book" on their commute <- actually I saw this in FRANCE

phf: i don't think even tolkien fans think of tolkien as a writer, that's why him and his brood get own section at a bookstore

mircea_popescu: this activity, not just "tolkien" but generally "reading", is very much subverted in the anglotard world. have yo useen this, whole carloads of white, quiet, mousy people "reading a book" on their commute.

mircea_popescu: otherwise, the notion that tolkien is a writer is not unlike the notion that roger alexander of the us civil war reenactment society is A CIVIL WAR HERO.

diana_coman: mircea_popescu, "there's no errect penis in tolkien's book" - is this a correct description of the main fault you find?

asciilifeform: i dunno that i've ever run into anyone among the kind of folk BingoBoingo described, who actually ~read~ tolkien.

diana_coman: other than that I don't see any link to either immersive universes or Gandalf or Tolkien or whatever else

diana_coman: uhm, what worlds where people are special BingoBoingo ? as far as I know Tolkien's point was quite the opposite of this really

BingoBoingo: <mircea_popescu> nothing wrong with this, EXCEPT it comes with instructions, and the instructions include "how to castrate yourself with your new lego set" << This does seem like Tolkien/Lewis/Rowling et al. Pretty much made to turn people into apies with "worlds where people are special but fucking doesn't exist"

mircea_popescu: phf allow me to quote to you from modern tolkien : "The heir apparent, Crown Prince Maha Vajiralongkorn, is poorly regarded in Thailand and the succession has clouded the brows of not only the Thai political elite, but the Thai people, who believe a period of substantial instability will follow the King's death" ☟︎

phf: well, tolkien ~is~ a construction set, but that's its whole point, it's just a very elaborate construction set.

diana_coman: so basically that's what you are asking for: translate tolkien for me so that I can see what is worth in there for in the current language I can't see it

mircea_popescu: ~obviously~ you could translate, if that were the matter, "oh they brought him tolkien in islandic and he doesn't read that"

phf: tolkien is not literature though, it's more like an oxford style set of artifacts (epics, linguistic analysis, chronicles, etc.). the interesting part of tolkien is that he invented a universe and described it through same set of tools he would describe historical past. the sex part is on point, because stodgy british professor, he views his imaginary world through same dodgy prism he views historical past.

diana_coman: asciilifeform was faster than me on tolkien; it sounds to me that mircea_popescu's objection to Tolkien is that he did not tackle the right problem(s)

asciilifeform: the imitators, who chopped up tolkien and shannonized - are not worth the dust from my balls.

asciilifeform: tolkien was an archaeologist and linguist, dug through all of europe's myths, legends, in the original languages, to make his feedstock. and was a talented and quite humble man, never saw ~any income from his fiction - which was superb, if verbose - during life.

diana_coman: don't know where he is on that, but harry potter is a shit from what I saw and no way to compare it to tolkien

mircea_popescu: yes, this includes tolkien. no, i don't see him as much more than an earlier, therefore craftier, woman what's her name.

mircea_popescu: (in fairness to be distinguished from bayes' own work, about in the sense re tolkien above)

mircea_popescu: but yes, pretty much everyone with serious cultural immersion in anglosphere said the same re tolkien. what can i say, i'll take yer word for it.

mircea_popescu: whole tolkien/rawling/etc 2000s bullshit runs together in my mind with star wards and iron pants or w/e the 2010s "superhero" films are.

gribble: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=uruk-hai | In J. R. R. Tolkien's fictional epic, "The Lord of the Rings," the Uruk-hai (Black Speech meaning Orc folk) were a new breed of Orcs that appeared during the ...

asciilifeform: BingoBoingo: there's a whole world of it. traditionally dominated by bad tolkien riffs, but GOT isn't one of these either

assbot: Logged on 10-02-2015 16:46:25; thestringpuller: ;;google 2nd breakfast tolkien

BingoBoingo: ben_vulpes: fwiw there aren't many orcs in the rural bits of ussa, and one can shoot trespassers on sign in those provinces too << Different kind, even tolkien had different kinds of orcs

assbot: Art Student Hand-Illuminates, Binds a Copy of Tolkien's Silmarillion | MAKE ... ( http://bit.ly/1IC1ZAR )

asciilifeform: like tolkien's orcs, these were built artificially and with great care.

asciilifeform: i think that's close to the exact sum, in modern usd, that tolkien was paid for his books.